A reformed gang banger said yesterday that prison is only a place where rookie criminals learn to become experts.

Dexter Deal, author of “The Fight of My Life is Wrapped Up in My Father”, while appearing as a guest on Love 97’s daily talk show Issues of the Day, said Her Majesty’s Prisons (HMP) is a waste of time and money and does not serve as a place for rehabilitation.

Since being kicked out of high school at the age of 16, Mr. Deal admitted that he wreaked havoc on the streets of New Providence until being a gangster caused him his eyesight.

According to Mr. Deal he went in to prison knowing only basic crimes, but through interaction with more hardened criminals, he learned how to carry out the crimes “flawlessly” and admitted that the only way to prove he committed a crime was to catch him red handed.

“The first time I went to prison was three weeks after my 17th birthday and it was for shop breaking,” he said.

“Prison is a breeding ground for future criminals. This young, misguided teenager went to prison at the age of 17 and five months later when I came back out I returned to prison for possession of two unlicensed firearms, attempted murder and armed robbery. It was in prison that I learned about crime. It was in prison that my true education really began in life.”

The government last year passed a Correctional Services Bill for Her Majesty’s Prison (HMP) that would see it transformed from a punitive into a correctional facility.

However, Mr. Deal said prison either breaks or makes you into a hardened criminal.

“Because there’s no sort of recreation, what people do there to pass the time is they tell stories,” he said.

As written in his book, Mr. Deal believes the root of the problem is that the majority of criminals come from homes with no fathers.

With that, he said these young men then find other people to fill the void.

“For some, they look to basketball players, actors and rappers,” he said.

“For others, they look to the gang leaders in their community because they’re the only ones making them feel like they are wanted. The Bible tells us to love yourself and love your neighbour. But if I don’t love me, how am I supposed to feel about you and your future? This is the mindset we’re working against. Those individuals have no problem going to prison. They have no problem dying in a life of crime.”

Mr. Deal said if it were not for him losing his eyesight, he would have still been living in a life of crime, or possibly dead.

He lost his vision after he was injured trying to rob an armoured truck.

“The sad part about it, for me it wasn’t about the cash,” he said.

“It was the thrill. It was the excitement. For me, it was like attending the Olympic Games. This was as big as it gets. The scripture points out in Proverbs 10 chapter 23 that those who are doing wrong would look at it as a sport.”

Mr. Deal believes police are only fighting flames when they combat crime.

“You would never use an extinguisher to out a fire from the flame,” he said.

“One of the things they tell you is never point the nozzle at the flame. Point it at the base. That is where the fuel is. Crime, murders and things of that sort, they’re all flames the police are fighting.”

According to Mr. Deal, the majority of men on death row are men that grew up in a home without a father.